Business Roundtable

Washington – Making a commitment to educating a new generation of engineers, 31 member CEOs of Business Roundtable (BRT) have pledged to hire more than 6,000 additional engineering interns next year.

BRT announced the commitment as the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness met in Portland, Ore., for a forum on increasing the number of engineers in the United States.  Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Paul Otellini, President and CEO of Intel Corp., are leading the forum at Portland State University.

BRT-member CEOs reported their plans for engineering interns in response to an appeal sent by Otellini; Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric Company; and Ellen Kullman, Chairman and CEO of DuPont.  All three serve on the President’s Job Council; Immelt is its chairman.

“Business Roundtable companies already make an important difference in U.S. engineering education by providing internships within their companies for promising engineering students, which have proven highly effective in boosting engineering student recruitment and retention – a critical national need,” the three CEOs wrote in an Aug. 19 e-mail.

“More engineering graduates will create a strong platform for future U.S. innovation leadership and economic growth,” they added. “More engineering interns also will help make our companies more innovative and competitive.”

Business Roundtable has long been an advocate of increasing the number of U.S. graduates who earn bachelor’s degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM). BRT leads the Tapping America’s Potential (TAP) Coalition, created in 2005 to promote STEM education in colleges and universities.

For many of the companies, the pledges will represent a doubling of their engineering internships in 2012. A list of the BRT companies making the commitment today is appended. 

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CEO-member companies of Business Roundtable who committed today to double their internship opportunities in 2012:

• Alcoa Incorporated
• American Express Company
• AT&T
• Bayer AG
• BNSF Railway
• Boeing
• Cardinal Health
• Caterpillar
• Cognizant Technology Solutions
• Duke Energy Corporation
• DuPont
• Eaton
• Fluor Corporation
• General Electric
• Intel Corporation
• JP Morgan Chase & Co.
• MasterCard
• McKesson Corporation
• NextEra Energy Resources, LLC
• Simon Property Group Inc.
• Suffolk Construction
• SunGard
• TE Connectivity, LTD.
• Textron Inc.
• Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.
• Xerox Corporation

Five other BRT companies also committed to increase internship opportunities in 2012:

• Bechtel Corporation
• Chevron Corporation
• EMC
• Johnson and Johnson Inc.
• Texas Instruments Inc.